Witchy Cultivation

I didn’t trust Vesna enough to let her roam freely during the night. Despite the magic pact I observed and Minnow’s assurances, caution seemed the wiser course when dealing with a centuries-old predator.

“You’ll sleep in here,” I told her, leading her to a small storeroom at the back of the pub. It had likely once held grain on shelves and barrels of mead, with sturdy walls and a heavy door that could be barred from the outside.

Vesna’s golden eyes glittered in the dim light. “A cell within a sanctuary,” she observed dryly. “How generous.”

“Just a precaution,” I corrected her. “Until more trust is established. Put yourself to sleep at night with your song magic so that your rest cycle is aligned with mine.”

“As you wish, warlock.” She entered the room with a sigh, her dark wings folded tightly against her back. “Until morning, then.”

Minnow slid off Vesna, half-smudged and moving across the wall like a creeping shadow that watched me with those unnerving black eyes.

“She won’t attempt escape,” the small nav assured me. “The bond is true. I will watch over her dreams.”

“And feed on them?”

“Yes,” the nav answered. “I will feed on her dreams. That is our deal.”

“Which will do what?”

“Which will reveal her secrets and plans to me,” the nav replied. “One cannot deceive themselves in dreams. As she is ancient and very magical, her dreams will make me grow in power, give me greater presence in the physical world… fortify my existence.”

“Aight,” I replied, “Let me know what you learn tomorrow.”

The nav flitted into the room with the Sirin. I pulled a wheelbarrow with a small pile of my domain earth close to the Sirin to hide her from Jotun-sniffery and then closed the door and secured it with a heavy wooden beam. 

Stormy had already claimed her spot on my domain soil sled, curled into a tight ball of black fur. I joined her, settling onto the warm, violet-tinged earth that had become my bed in this strange world of magic beasts. Sleep came quickly, my body exhausted from the day of dragging the elk corpse home.

Morning arrived with pale light filtering through the round stained glass windows above the shutters casting colorful circles across the pub’s worn floorboards. I woke feeling refreshed, with a pitch of a tingling sensation coursing through my body that hadn’t been there before.

Curious, I summoned the status window.

| Name: Ioan Starfall

| Age: 17 winters

| Kin & Blood: Witch, Zemlya-Touched

| Soul’s Root: Witch of Svalbard

| Tier: 2

| Anima: 89/89

| Domain Bound Anima: 417/417

| Might of Zemlya: 0

| Swiftness of Wind: 0

| Grace of Hand: 0

| Vitality: 1

| Voice of the Wild: 0

| Blessings & Craft: None

| Cultivated Essence: 3

The change was immediate and obvious—my Cultivated Essence had increased from 0 to 3 overnight and I was now tier 2, whatever that meant. I stared at the floating numbers, wondering what had triggered the growth. What has changed recently?

The barrels. 

It had to be the barrels containing the corpses I’d buried in my domain soil. Yaga had mentioned that “all things that decay and bloom in your domain’s soil will gradually empower you” plus my conversations with Vesna and Minnow confirmed it. The decomposition process was somehow ‘cultivating’ power.

I released Vesna from her makeshift cell, finding her perched on a small barrel, her wings wrapped around her body like a cocoon. She unfolded herself as the door opened, stretching languidly with a yawn of predator canine teeth.

“Warlock,” she greeted me. 

“Vesna,” I said.

She followed me out of her ‘room’ grumbling that the sun was being noisy. Minnow seemed to be asleep on her shoulder, wrapped around her neck like a dark gray scarf.

I headed for the barrels that contained my macabre garden. They stood where I’d left them, arranged in a triangle around my sled. The lids were sealed tight, but a faint odor of rot emanated from them—the unmistakable scent of decomposition.

I pried open the first barrel, wrinkling my nose at the intensified smell that wafted out. Vesna recoiled sharply.

“What in Nox’s name are you doing?” she hissed, backing away.

“What? You can smell that?” I asked.

“Yes, I can smell rotting flesh,” she replied, her nose twitching. “It is unpleasant. Why are you…”

“I am checking my experiment,” I replied, tipping the nearest barrel sideways and digging out the corpse.

The human body I’d placed inside was partially decomposed, far more than should have been possible in such a short period of time. The flesh had largely liquefied, the fluids almost entirely absorbed into the violet-tinted earth and the bones were crystallizing, transforming from white calcium structures to violet-tinged crystalline formations that resembled the rocks in my domain soil.

“Seriously, why do you keep corpses in barrels?!” The Sirin retreated even further away from me.

I glanced at her, then back to the barrel. “To understand the process of what my domain does to bodies. Didn’t you ever check on the bodies you collected for your tree?”

“Ugh, no!” she exclaimed, looking genuinely revolted. “The Mother-oak handled all that. I simply delivered them, dropped them into her wooden maws and then they… disappeared into her root-spheres.” 

“Oh, so they weren’t your snacks?”

“Snacks?! I prefer to catch and eat my meat fresh, since I can just call prey out with my voice. The dead hold no interest for me.”

Her reaction was interesting—this predator who had slaughtered countless victims was disgusted by the natural decay process. A medieval sensibility, perhaps. Or maybe Sirins had an instinctive aversion to rot? Either way, my original presumption that the Sirin was storing bodies for later consumption was wrong.

I emptied and examined the other barrels, finding similar progress in each. The animal remains in the third barrel were almost completely reduced to crystalline bone structures, the process seemingly faster in the smaller organism.

Vesna stared at me with a disgusted expression.

“As you can note, the decomposition is accelerated by some kind of life-energy emanating from the domain earth,” I explained, putting my research subjects back into their barrels, leaving a few samples on the table. “The bacteria and other micro-organisms are consuming the flesh at a truly extraordinary rate.”

“What’s bacteria?” she asked.

“Tiny living things too small to see,” I clarified. “They’re everywhere—in the air, the soil, on our skin. They break down dead matter.”

“What? There are invisible creatures… eating us? Right now?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” I said, trying not to smile at her discomfort. “It’s a natural process. When we die, they consume our bodies and transform them into something new. In this case, my domain is directing that transformation toward bone crystallization.”

“That’s… unsettling,” she muttered.

“To be completely honest you’re a magical beast with blood that crystallizes in the open air and I’m… whatever I am,” I said. “Maybe micro-organisms don’t actually eat us? I’ll need your help to build a better microscope… errr a metal and glass tool that magnifies the view and thoroughly examine our hair, feathers, skin and blood with it.”

“Ugh. Gross and weird,” the Sirin shuddered.

I reburied the corpses fully, packing fresh domain soil around them as I considered where to put my newly cultivated essence.

“Why do you want to study such things?” Vesna asked as I washed my hands in a water basin.

“Knowledge,” I replied simply. “Understanding how things work gives me power over them.”

I retrieved my Codex book from where Stormy was sleeping on it. Shoving the kitten off the book, I began recording my observations, sketching the crystalline bone structures, looking at the samples with my shoddy water drop microscope and noting the accelerated decomposition timeline.

Domain Decomposition Process:- Subject 1 (Adult Human Male in his 40s): 50% tissue liquefaction after approximately 49 hours. Bone crystallization beginning at extremities (fingers, toes) and advancing toward larger bones. Notable violet coloration developing in remaining tissue.- Subject 2 (Adult Human Female in her 30s): 60% tissue liquefaction. Similar progression to Subject 1, but slightly more advanced, perhaps because the subject is smaller and female.- Subject 3 (Fox): Near-complete tissue decomposition. Skeleton fully crystallized with pronounced violet hue. Size appears to be a factor in conversion speed.Liquefaction has been greatly accelerated. What would normally take months in standard decomposition is occurring in just days. The domain appears to be supercharging bacterial metabolism while simultaneously directing the crystallization process in specific patterns.Hypothesis: The domain is using the bacteria as tools, both to break down organic matter and to reconstruct it into crystalline structures that can store or channel magical energy. The energy released during decomposition is being captured rather than dissipated as heat.Questions for further investigation:1. Can I direct or control this crystallization process?2. Are different tissues converted to different types of crystals?3. What is the relationship between crystallization and Cultivation Essence gain?4. Can this process be applied to living tissue? 

After completing my notes on the dead test subjects, I turned my attention to the various materials I’d placed in and around my domain soil yesterday. Each had responded differently to exposure, and I documented each reaction carefully.

The woods showed varying degrees of crystallization, with softer woods like pine transforming more quickly than dense hardwoods like oak. The metals exhibited interesting patterns—iron developed a violet patina that seemed to protect it from rust, while copper and silver showed minimal change beyond a slight iridescent sheen.

Most intriguing were the gemstones and jewelry. The pearls had developed a mild violet luster, and the various gemstones seemed to shimmer faintly with violet refractions when viewed from certain angles. The gold items showed the least change.

I jotted down detailed notes on each material, contemplating the implications. If my domain could transform common materials into magical variants, the applications were potentially limitless.

Vesna observed my work from her dark corner, her glowing, gold eyes tracking my movements with a touch of curiosity and wariness.

“Did scholars or Alchemists not do this in the old Svalbard?” I asked her. “Before the ice came?”

“I… suppose they did,” she shrugged. “Many of my memories of my childhood are… hollow, incomplete.”

“What can you remember?”

“Even back then, I could sing magic into existence, bend reality ever so slightly with my words.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Did you go to school back then? At what age did you make your pact with River Glinka?”

“I did.” Vesna made a sour face. “I was sixteen when I sought out the river,” she said after a moment, her harmonious voice taking on a hollow quality. “A naive, desperate girl yearning for limitless power… that didn’t rely on celesteel.”

“What’s celesteel?” I asked.

“Celesteel,” she repeated, “is magical metal bound to flesh.”

“Bound how?”

“With a needle. A magic tattoo design, hexagrammic patterns embedded into skin. Very painful.”

“So, over three hundred years ago mages had magic tattoos to reinforce their power?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Men had tattoos that reinforced the strength of their bodies while women’s tattoos amplified their magic spells.”

“Internal and external variance,” I noted.

“Yes,” Vesna said. 

“Could you… make such magical tattoos on someone?” I wondered.

“If I had the needle and some celesteel ink… Maybe? Although I have no idea where I would even find such,” she shrugged. “As the most basic option—metal dust can be applied with a paintbrush, but it will flake off quickly, losing its potency. I would have to sing and meditate on it, try to recall the exact patterns. I received them bloody often enough as the damned tattoos had to be refreshed each year after they burned away with use and became distorted as my body grew.”

“Could you amplify my magic this way?” I wondered.

“How? I cannot see you,” she pointed out. 

“I could step outside of my domain,” I said.

“Hrm,” Vesna considered it. “Then… perhaps I could.”

“You should experiment on Minnow first,” I said. 

“What?” Dark eyes of the shadow-ghost opened on Vesna’s shoulder.